Plain answers for pet parents in Nigeria: what a symptom might mean, which vaccine is due, what is safe to feed, and when it can't wait for the vet.
Vomiting comes with warning and effort: restlessness, heaving, and partly digested, sour-smelling food. Regurgitation has neither: undigested food slides out, often within minutes of eating, and the pet seems fine. Vomiting points a vet to the stomach and gut; regurgitation to the gullet. Film it if you can.
Symptoms & DiseasesA cough can be an infection, a failing heart, worms in the lungs, or something stuck. What separates them is not the sound so much as when it happens and what comes with it.
Symptoms & DiseasesRingworm is a fungus, not a worm, and it spreads to people. Treatment is straightforward but slow, and the part most households get wrong is the cleaning.
Symptoms & DiseasesDrinking more and urinating more, while eating well and losing weight. That combination is the signal, and it appears months before anything looks wrong.
Symptoms & DiseasesTick fever is an infection ticks pass to dogs, usually ehrlichiosis or babesiosis. The signs are fever, tiredness, loss of appetite, pale gums and dark or red urine, often weeks after the tick has gone. It needs a vet the same day; most dogs treated early recover well.
Symptoms & DiseasesEyes deteriorate in hours rather than days. A squinting dog is a same-day problem, and the wrong drops can cost the eye entirely.
Symptoms & DiseasesStraining is the signal, and it is also the trap: in a male cat, straining that looks like constipation is often a blocked bladder, which is fatal within two days.
Symptoms & DiseasesAllergy is a diagnosis of elimination, which is why it takes months and why owners lose patience. Here is the order the work has to happen in, and why shortcuts fail.
Symptoms & DiseasesCheck the paw first, because that is where most limps come from and the only cause you can safely fix at home. Then know which limps mean go now.
Symptoms & DiseasesScooting is blamed on worms and is usually anal glands. What they are, why they block, and why expressing them routinely at home tends to make things worse.
Symptoms & DiseasesA honking cough that sounds far worse than it usually is, spread wherever dogs gather. Most cases resolve, and knowing which do not is the useful part.
Symptoms & DiseasesAn ear infection that returns three times a year is not bad luck. It is an untreated underlying cause, and finding it is the only thing that ends the cycle.
Symptoms & DiseasesWhat worms actually look like in stool and vomit, what gets mistaken for them, and which signs mean the burden is heavy enough to be dangerous.
Symptoms & DiseasesTwo very different diseases share the name. One spreads to you and the other does not, one is intensely itchy and the other barely, and the treatments are not interchangeable.
Symptoms & DiseasesMost diarrhoea settles in a day or two with rest and bland food. The exceptions are recognisable, and in a puppy the clock runs much faster than owners expect.
Symptoms & DiseasesMost vomiting in a dog that is otherwise bright settles within a day. Go to a vet now for repeated vomiting, blood, retching with nothing coming up, a swollen belly, a suspected swallowed object, or a puppy that is not fully vaccinated.
Symptoms & DiseasesTreating the animal is roughly a fifth of the job. The rest of the infestation is in the house, which is why fleas keep coming back a fortnight after you thought you had won.
Symptoms & DiseasesParvovirus is the virus that kills more puppies than anything else, and it moves in hours: a puppy that suddenly will not eat, then vomiting and diarrhoea, often bloody. It needs a vet the same day; the sooner treatment starts, the better the puppy's chances. The full DHLPP vaccine course prevents it.
Symptoms & DiseasesConstant scratching is usually fleas, mange mites, an allergy or a skin infection. Look closely at the skin and coat, treat every pet in the house for fleas properly, and see a vet if it lasts more than a week or the skin is red, broken, bald or smelly.
Skeepers can chat with a vet free, as often as they need, from their dashboard.
Skeepedia is general information, not a diagnosis. If your pet is unwell, see a vet.